


won't you keep letting me

by littletownstreet



Series: the feeling i've got [1]
Category: Little Mix (Band), One Direction (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Friends With Benefits, LA, jiall meltdown 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24916435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littletownstreet/pseuds/littletownstreet
Summary: Jade stays with Niall while she's in LA.
Relationships: Niall Horan/Jade Thirlwall
Series: the feeling i've got [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856548
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	won't you keep letting me

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [jade saying she has trouble making friends in LA](https://youtu.be/3TWQ0X17zNY?t=688) and [miscellaneous niall horan activities.](https://nialljade.tumblr.com/post/621393746102222848/dailyniallnews-niallhorans-instagram-activity) mostly the former because niall hates me and doesn't like giving me things.
> 
> tagged canon compliant because it's all i have. i don't know the specifics of either of their break-up timelines and i don't care, don't think too hard about when this is supposed to take place.

“Is that new?” 

Niall startles, he didn’t hear her come in. 

“I like it,” Jade says. It makes him feel warm to the tips of his toes, the way she’s smiling at him. He can feel himself start to flush embarrassingly, hopefully she chalks it up to the LA sun. 

He starts to pluck at his guitar again. “It’s not really anything yet.”

“Have you got something in mind?”

“Nah, just had the melody in my head for a while,” he tells her, which is a half-truth. The other half of the truth is that he’s got lyrics floating around about honey colored curls and dark brown eyes and a bright laugh, but he thinks she’d rather not know about that part. 

He turns his head to get a better look at her; she usually slips out of bed and out the door while Niall is still fast asleep and he doesn’t get to see her until she comes back in the afternoon. The first time it happened he assumed she wasn’t coming back at all. 

(She ended up coming back with a packed suitcase and a comment about how she’d checked out of her hotel. Niall couldn’t stop smiling the whole evening.) 

She’s wearing one of his hoodies today. Something he learned pretty early on is that Jade loves an oversized hoodie, and if he leaves one of his lying around within her reach she’ll put his on instead of digging through her suitcase. This one is so large on her that the sleeves fall several inches past her fingertips and covers her shorts so it looks like she’s wearing nothing underneath. He turns back to his guitar and tucks that thought away, another detail to hide in a song he’ll never show her. He tends to let her instigate things. 

Jade’s been staying with him the past couple days she’s been in LA. She and Leigh Anne were supposed to be here together for work, but Leigh Anne had to bail at the last second and Jade ended up flying over herself. He’d heard through the grapevine that she was in town, and later had it confirmed when she posted a selfie to her instagram story, palm trees in the background and a location tag that read “Los Angeles.” He hadn’t spoken to her properly in years, but at that moment he was just the right amount of buzzed to reply to the story. 

After texting back and forth for a bit, he learned Jade was a bit lonely out west all by herself, so he offered to take her out and introduce her to his own friends in LA. The falling-into-bed-together part is a bit of a drunken blur for him, but once she spent the night at his, he never pushed her out the door and she never made a move to leave. 

It’s been nice, not just the hooking up, but the nights out and the songwriting and the commiserating about terrible breakups. It’s nice to have someone around the house. He forgets sometimes how lonely big cities and big houses can get when you’re single. He likes the echo of Jade’s footsteps through the house and her muffled voice on the phone in the other room. He likes having her around.

It’s also been completely miserable for him because shortly after inviting her to stay with him he realized he’s about one week out from being totally in love. 

She told him some time after that first night that an LA summer romance sounded _so fun._ She was giggling and smiling, wild curls fanned over the pillow and twisted around his fingers. He’d wanted to keep her that way. Jade’s breakup was a bit fresher for her, so he’d told her _I can do casual,_ _I’m the best at casual._ Easier said than done, apparently, but beggars can’t be choosers. 

“It’s nice,” she tells him. “It’s sweet. Like a love song.” 

“Ha, don’t know about that,” he says, and then transitions to another song entirely, like she’ll be able to see the confession in the melody if he gives her the opportunity. She’s kind of dangerously close at the moment. Not exactly the work of someone who’s _the best at casual._

She sighs, “I miss the rain. Do you miss rain when you’re out here?” 

He chuckles. He’s far from a born and bred Californian, but after years and years the city’s lost a bit of it’s glamor. The rain – or the lack thereof – isn’t something to miss so much as it is a fact of life. One of his favorite parts of Jade’s stay has been seeing the city through her eyes, showing her his favorite spots and introducing her to his favorite people here and watching her enjoy it for the first time. It’s been so long since Los Angeles managed to excite him like this, and he likes that he gets to be the one to show it to her. 

“I’ve been here a handful of times,” she told him one night. It was on the car ride home from a night out, and she was looking out the window, watching the buildings and the people go by. Her whole face looked golden, the way she was only illuminated by the streetlights. “It feels like a completely different city.”

He never tells her anything like that. More private thoughts for embarrassing lovesick songs. Instead he says, “I’ve got a pool out back.”

She rolls her eyes. “Are you even listening to me? That’s not the same,” she says. “That sounds fun, though. I’ll keep it in mind.” 

He just laughs at her. 

“Ugh,” she groans, throwing herself dramatically across his sofa. Her head lands right next to his thigh. He could reach down and run his fingers through her hair, if he wanted. He keeps his hands on the guitar. “Is this what you do all day? Sit alone in your big house and write songs by yourself? I miss Leigh Anne.”

“That’s not all I do,” he says, laughing at her exaggerated pout. “Sometimes pretty girls come by to keep me company.”

She wrinkles her nose at him. “Gross. I’ll let it go for now, though,” she says with a smile, hauling herself up to her knees and crawling closer to him. “Put the guitar away.”

It’s an instruction he’s all too happy to comply with, especially when she moves onto his lap and threads her fingers through his hair to pull him in for a kiss.

“Do you know what your song really needs?” She asks him, momentarily pulling away from his mouth.

“What?”

She waggles her eyebrows playfully, “A four-part harmony.”

He kisses her again. “No,” he laughs, “I think this one’s mine for now.” 

**Author's Note:**

> title from maggie rogers' "love you for a long time" because that's those are the vibes i told miranda this would have and then it didn't!! lol!! kept the title because i imagine if this kept going they'd get their properly happy ending. 
> 
> thank u to miranda who is very good at pretending to care about the things i say. shout out to gwen, the other 50% of the jiall fandom. also shout out to [the only other real jiall fic on this whole website](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007334), don't know where this author is now but ur my hero, queen.
> 
> thank u for reading, hope ur safe and healthy <3


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